


Revised Rankings

by dancinguniverse



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-05 21:56:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17333072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinguniverse/pseuds/dancinguniverse
Summary: Dinesh isn't the proudest of his looks but considering the rest of the house, he's pretty sure he's easily its most attractive member.Then Gilfoyle starts building a server in the garage.





	Revised Rankings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrsthessaly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsthessaly/gifts).



Dinesh doesn't feel great about his body. He's too soft from too many hours at a computer desk, too many sodas and snacks and pizza instead of real food. If he had to outrun a tiger or an angry gang member, he'd probably just die. But his saving grace is that despite living in California, land of sun and beaches and beautiful people, the truth is that his world is mostly composed of other nerds who spend as little time in the gym as he does.

Sure, there are the brogrammers of the world. There are the successful guys, the ones who don't have to spend ten hours a day in front of their computer, because their apps sold for a million dollars and now they can hire personal trainers to make them look good naked. In Dinesh's mind, these trainers are always women of course, and then Success Guy probably sleeps with her, once she's seen how good he looks while working out. In fact, she's kind of sassy about it, and tricks him into wearing less and less while he lifts weights, or maybe she dares him to --

Look, this is getting off track, but the point is, Dinesh is okay with his only okay body, because he knows who the real competition is, and they're not that much either. In the rankings of the house, Dinesh actually thinks he's probably vying up near the top, should a woman break down in front of their house and need a warm place to stay in a freak Palo Alto blizzard. Which is crazy, Dinesh knows. It's far more likely to be a heat wave, and her car breaks down, and she needs a place to cool off while waiting for her tow truck. Which is better anyway, because she'll have stripped down to her tank top in the heat, hair plastered to the back of her neck, and how is it that girls never smell horrible when they sweat, unlike every guy he's ever met?

Richard is hardly ever not sweaty, and while Dinesh guesses he's not hideous, he's scrawny and nervous, and Dinesh is confident Pakistani Denzel comes out on top in any sort of match up.

Erlich has more confidence than the rest of the house put together, but Dinesh is sure -- pretty sure, mostly sure -- that it's all talk. He's seen the way Monica and Laurie look at him, and Carla and Tara and literally every female and most males who have been in their house or ever met him. Somehow he's slept with Dan's wives, but Dinesh suspects there's some kind of Dan-related pheromone thing happening there, because there's just not another explanation.

Jared, he and Gilfoyle have discussed, is possibly asexual, or maybe Richard-sexual, or maybe only gets excited about like, a good cup of tea or a rare songbird. Dinesh has no idea, just that Jared isn't competition in any of his strange scenarios, and that if a girl does prefer Jared to him, Dinesh will probably be okay with letting her go.

Gilfoyle is a dick.

Gilfoyle is a dick, and that should really be enough, because Dinesh isn't so hopeless that he's turned to the red pill side of things. In fact, the one thing he thinks he's got going for him is that he's a nice guy, no capital letters, and Gilfoyle is a dick, and that should really be the end of things in that department.

But that doesn't explain Tara, or the other women who seem to take his dickishness as dry humor. Dinesh puts up with him, of course, because honestly Gilfoyle is still cooler than Richard, smarter than Bighead, less annoying than Erlich, less boring than Jared.

That doesn't mean women should be into him. Dinesh just doesn't have any other options. He' s Stockholm Syndromed for friends. Acquaintances. Favored co-workers. Whatever they are. 

But women don't appear to find Gilfoyle hideous. He has glasses, for fuck's sake. He's skinny. He has long hair. Dinesh is clearly cooler than he is, even without the tattoos, which really just show that he's one of those weirdos who's way too into church, and Dinesh doesn't know why that should be cool just because his church is about Satan instead of Jesus. It's like he never outgrew his Hot Topic phase in high school. Dinesh knows. Dinesh had baggy pants and a wallet with a chain, and the pictures of it have been scoured off the face of the internet, because he moved past that phase, like a mature adult should. Thank fuck high school was before the days of the Cloud.

The point is that Dinesh is by all rights The Hot One in the house, whatever their respective dating records may imply. The truth will out, Dinesh is sure, and when Pied Piper strikes it big, he's going to be rolling in women.

Then Gilfoyle starts building a server in the garage.

Dinesh won't say it to Gilfoyle, not under pain of torture and death, but he's suddenly much less confident in his rankings.

Part of it is the way Gilfoyle looks wrestling shelving units around and heaving the rigs onto them. Which is absurd, because he spends plenty of time walking around the house in a towel after his shower, or walking into the kitchen for a midnight snack in nothing but his boxers. Dinesh will stand by his assertion that Gilfoyle is skinny and not at all fit when he's shirtless, but fuck if that doesn't matter when he's in a tank top, his flannel stripped off, the muscles in his arms bunching as he wedges another bank of processors into place.

And it's different, Dinesh can admit, if only to himself, when he's in action. It's not just the image he paints with his bare arms and the streak of sweat dampening the back of his shirt that's somehow enticing instead of disgusting. It's watching him in motion, the concentrated focus he brings to his work. He's freakishly competent, creating a whole system out of scraps and pieces, new and old and scavenged. He's confident, lacking Erlich's insistent self-accolades and armed only with his usual dry reserve, and that just makes it more impressive and therefore annoying.

Dinesh can't let him have all the glory to himself, so he submits himself to the smell of Gilfoyle sweat and the sight of his stupid, naked arms everywhere to make himself due for at least some credit of the new server. Gilfoyle is smart, or Dinesh wouldn't put up with him, but he's not out of Dinesh's league or anything, and fuck him for claiming to be. Dinesh has just as much right to build the server as Gilfoyle.

Then he finds out that Gilfoyle has actually done this before, albeit on a smaller scale, and the closest Dinesh has come is building himself a gaming rig. Which it turns out is not the same thing. At all.

Despite Gilfoyle's initial resistance to Dinesh's help, he caves, because Dinesh isn't useless, thank you very much. Or because he has a talent for somehow making himself Gilfoyle's bitch, and he'd be more cranky about how hot and sweaty he is, how dirty his jeans are, if Gilfoyle wasn't also on his hands and knees, plugging in cables and rearranging power cords. Dinesh did ask to help, and now he's wondering why he bothered, when he could be inside where there was air conditioning the last time he checked. Unless Gilfoyle's turned that off, too, to save electricity.   
Dinesh wipes a hand over his forehead, and his hair is damp with sweat and probably sticking up in horrible ways. He swipes the hand down his jeans in disgust, and bumps one of the shelving units. There's the faintest change in tempo of the whirring fans connected to the rigs, and Gilfoyle's head shoots up to glare at him.

"If you fucking touch one piece of Anton," he threatens, "I will leave scorpions in your underwear drawer." Dinesh thinks very hard about kicking the base of the shelf, just to see what Gilfoyle would do.

Instead he scowls. "Fine. Have fun keeping things going without me. I'm going to get a drink."

When he comes back, he has a second glass of water, because Gilfoyle's looking a little tight around the eyes, and Dinesh isn't sure he could drag his heat-stroked body out of the garage without knocking over half the server shelves. Of course, Gilfoyle snaps at him for daring to bring water into the room at all, but he takes a break, sitting on the doorstep and trading Dinesh a hank of ethernet cables for the tumbler. Dinesh feels like an idiot, crawling around on his hands and knees again, feeding cables underneath and around the shelving units, and it's not any easier with Gilfoyle watching and backseat cable-laying in between sips of water.

"You are really bossy," Dinesh tells him over his shoulder, ass in the air, as he stretches one arm out as far as it will go around a cluster of processors. "You were that kid everyone hated doing school projects with, weren't you?"

"For many reasons," Gilfoyle acknowledges dryly. "Somehow I suspect you know the feeling."

"Actually people loved me. I have great handwriting."

"Well that's useful in this technological bubble we inhabit. Thank Lucifer when the modern world crumbles, we won't lose all access to written history as long as you're around."

"You're welcome for the water, asshole. And the help."

"I didn't ask for either," Gilfoyle points out.

Dinesh doesn't answer, intent on untangling a bunch of wires. The one he wants slips through his fingers, slick with sweat, for the third time, and he curses, leaning his head on his forearm for just a moment.

There's a frozen touch against the nape of his neck, and Dinesh jerks sharply, feeling it slide icily down his back and lodge in the waistband of his pants. "Fucking fuck!" he yelps, flailing and just managing not to dislodge the rack he was working on as he yanks the remaining sliver of an ice cube out of his freaking underwear. He whips around, and Gilfoyle is snickering at him, that awful, stupid laugh he has. "What the hell?"

"You're welcome for the ice," Gilfoyle tells him. "And hey -- be careful around Anton."

The wet line down his back is already warming into the sweat that soaks most of the rest of his shirt. But for a second, Dinesh shivers, because Gilfoyle had slipped fingers under his collar, brushing the damp hair at the base of Dinesh's neck, and the cold touch seems to linger longer than it should in the overheated garage. "You only did that because I can't get you back in here."

"If you think you can't get me back because of Anton, you're just not creative enough," Gilfoyle drawls. "But that's apparent from your usual work product." He saunters by, leaving the remainder of his glass in the doorway, and crouches down with his back to Dinesh, checking on the unit he'd left half-finished.

Dinesh glares at the back of his head, suddenly furious. Partly because he's actually a total blank just now on how to get Gilfoyle back, and he can't admit it. Partly because in the wake of the ice cube, he just feels more hot and sweaty and extra damp. And partly because smug on Gilfoyle is a terrible look, and Dinesh hates the way his stupid face looks like that, the little smile that's barely noticeable unless you spend the better part of your day looking up to see just the corner of Gilfoyle's face, like Dinesh does every day, weekday or not. In fact, he doesn't even have to see it, because he knows what Gilfoyle's voice sounds like when he's smiling like that, because he hears it even when they're playing videogames back to back on the couches. Sometimes he doesn't need to see or hear him to know that look is there, because he knows when it will be there, when Dinesh makes an especially cutting joke about Richard or Erlich or any random asshole online, and looks up just to watch the smile flicker into and out of existence on Gilfoyle's face.

"Fuck this," he snaps, wiping another line of sweat off his forehead. "I'm gonna go stick my head in the freezer."

"An oven is more traditional," Gilfoyle calls after him. "If you wanna do me a favor and kill yourself."

Dinesh holds up a finger, but he's not sure Gilfoyle sees him.

Dinesh ends up taking a cold shower when the freezer proves inadequate. He's in a slightly better mood by the time he gets out, and wanders back down the hall in clean jeans and a fresh polo shirt. He settles down on the doorstep, keeping his body tilted back out of the oven that is the garage.

"Hey, you want to grab some dinner? I'm starving."

Gilfoyle is once again buried in computer parts, slotting yet more processors into another empty rack, his static wristbands looking like bracelets that he would probably wear anyway because they're ugly and black. He's actually tied his hair back, which Dinesh didn't know he knew how to do. It looks messy and is already falling down in a way that shouldn't be reminding Dinesh of Aragorn as much as it does, fuck his life. Why is he like this? He could walk away, right now. He doesn't have to stay in this stupid garage with Gilfoyle and his stupid hair.

"I've got food in the kitchen."

There. The perfect out. Gilfoyle doesn't want to eat with him. "You've got dry cereal in the kitchen," Dinesh hears himself say, and Gilfoyle looks at him over his shoulder and hesitates. "That's not real food," he explains, because sometimes Gilfoyle is not a functioning adult. Anyway, it hurts him too, if Gilfoyle dies and can't finish the server and Pied Piper fails. "And even if it were, you haven't eaten any in seven hours."

"Fine," Gilfoyle agrees, standing and peeling off his static bands. He casts around on the floor, and comes up with his flannel, which he uses to wipe his face, but makes no motion to put on. "Floyd's?"

Dinesh thinks about arguing for form's sake, but he's also feeling subs. "Sure. You have to put on a shirt though," he warns.

"I am wearing a shirt, you pearl-clutching old biddy."

He is, but his black tank top is visibly sweat-stained and streaked with drywall dust besides, and Dinesh isn't going to be able to handle sitting across a booth from the tattoo on his upper arm, the smudge of dirt on his shoulder.

"You're gross," he argues weakly, but follows Gilfoyle out of the house without pushing it. They climb into Dinesh's car without discussion, because Gilfoyle's air conditioning only works on alternate Tuesdays. Driving also saves Dinesh from having to look at the snarl of hair where Gilfoyle's messy ponytail comes together, which restores his sense of equilibrium. By the time they get to the restaurant, they're bickering about how many more units the garage and their power supply can handle, and how many the network will need for the beta launch.

They order their meal at the counter and turn to find a booth. For a horrible minute, Dinesh thinks he's going to have to eat dinner across from a sweaty, bearded, tattooed man with no sleeves, and he wonders how his life has come to this. But the A/C is going full blast in an attempt to offset the heat from the grill and ovens, and after a minute Gilfoyle slides his arms back into his flannel. He still looks rumpled, but in a more familiar way, and Dinesh relaxes into their usual banter.

The drive home is quieter, Gilfoyle thinking about whatever he thinks about when he's off in his own head. Dinesh is thinking that it looks like it might possibly rain, and they should maybe let Jared know that his mattress is still sitting in the driveway where'd they'd left it that morning.

Dinesh turns off the main road and into the tangle of neighborhood roads that is their development. The plethora of stop signs unfortunately means he's looking sideways when Gilfoyle rolls his shoulders and stretches his hands up, pulling his hair free from its tie and running his fingers through it. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but Erlich's swimming pool of sexual advances actually sounds appealing."

Dinesh's eyes catch on the way Gilfoyle's ring is snagging in a tangle of hair. The sweat has dried, but it looks stiff, and it doesn't fall the way Dinesh, nor apparently Gilfoyle, is used to. He makes a dissatisfied sound and combs his hands through it, flexing the elastic around his knuckles to tie it back again.

His fingers slide through his hair once, twice, and the third time he misses the tiny chuck of drywall somehow still tangled there, Dinesh makes a sound and reaches out himself, fingers bumping Gilfoyle's as he plucks the offending piece of it out. His hair is snarled around it and Gilfoyle freezes when it starts to tug. Dinesh twists it free, holding it up when Gilfoyle turns his head to eye him curiously.

"What?" he demands, when Gilfoyle's eyes narrow. "You're a fucking slob. It's embarrassing to be seen with you."

Gilfoyle just keeps looking at him. 

"What?" 

Gilfoyle blinks behind his glasses, before finally opening his mouth to reply. "That stop sign isn't going to turn green no matter how long you wait." 

Dinesh snaps his mouth shut and presses down on the gas a little harder than necessary, jerking them into motion again. By the time they round the last corner before the house, Dinesh is babbling about hardware for the server setup, and Gilfoyle still hasn't said anything. It's unnerving. Or maybe it's totally normal. Dinesh has no idea. 

Okay, so maybe touching his hair had crossed a line. Dinesh isn't usually a touchy kind of person. The rest of his family is, and he's used to their touching him with good grace, but somehow he's never known how to pay it forward himself. And outside his family, he's lost. He knows he has no idea where the line is between casual and creepy, with women or men, business or casual. He knows that Erlich's heavy hands creep everyone out, not just him, that Richard is perhaps more touch averse than he is, that Jared alone seems to know the value of a soft hand on the shoulder.

Gilfoyle is handsy on occasion. He's the one who occasionally flicks Dinesh's ear in passing or, today a case in point, sticks an ice cube down his shirt. He drags his chair to Dinesh's workspace, sits on it backwards and lets his knee bang into Dinesh's thigh. He drapes himself over couches and stretches to read over Dinesh's shoulder. Dinesh remembers the night they won Tech Crunch, when Gilfoyle kept hitting him, every time they brushed up against one another, and every time Dinesh flinched away until he finally realized that Gilfoyle was excited, perhaps even happy, and that was his way of showing it.

"I'm gonna hit the pool," Gilfoyle says, and disappears into his bedroom.

Dinesh sits down at his workstation for lack of anything better to do. He checks Twitter, and Instagram, and then Gilfoyle goes striding past in a pair of black swim trunks with a towel slung over his shoulder, not looking at Dinesh. He grabs a beer out of the fridge and disappears into the backyard.

Dinesh clicks over to Reddit, and opens twelve tabs without reading any of them. He's scrolled mindlessly through three pages before he finally stands and sighs. "Dammit."

He follows Gilfoyle into the yard.

Gilfoyle is sitting on the pool steps with his beer, leaning back against the concrete. He'd clearly been all the way in, because his hair is wet and slicked back from his face, water still beading on his shoulders. Dinesh drags a chair over and sits down, keeping clear of the puddle seeping from where Gilfoyle's wet arms drape over the pavement.

He looks down. He doesn't take back his earlier judgement. It's not like Gilfoyle's a model or anything. There are a million guys in the valley more attractive than he is. He's pasty, because the most of the outdoors he sees is walking to the coffee shop with Dinesh a few times a week, and it just makes the dark line of hair on his belly stand out more. Gilfoyle looks up, and sees him looking. He holds out his beer and after hesitating a moment, Dinesh's fingers close around the bottleneck. He takes a long swallow and hands it back.

But Dinesh doesn't say anything, and strangely, neither does Gilfoyle. He simply sits in the water and drinks his beer, watching the squirrels in the trees, and the clouds moving high in the sky, and occasionally looking up to find Dinesh's eyes still glumly fixed on him, on the way his hair dries and curls up a little at the ends, on the way his ring shines and sometimes clinks against the beer bottle. They trade the bottle back and forth a few more times.

Finally Gilfoyle tilts the end of the beer into his mouth and then stands, water streaming off his trunks and legs. "I'm gonna grab a shower," he says, and Dinesh doesn't say anything. Maybe he's the only one being weird here. Maybe Gilfoyle will go back inside, and Dinesh will go back inside, and things will go back to normal, and Dinesh will stop being captivated by Gilfoyle's hands. It'll all make sense in the morning. 

But Gilfoyle pauses on the pool step, looming over Dinesh close enough to drip, and Dinesh looks up. 

That's his undoing. 

Gilfoyle is watching him, eyes dark and face flat. He leans in, and without thinking about it, Dinesh reaches up to meet him, fingers closing on wet hair. Gilfoyle's kiss scratches against Dinesh's mouth, tasting a little like beer and a little like chlorine, and his hand is wet on Dinesh's neck. Dinesh kisses him, and it's like letting out a breath he hadn't known he was holding, all the day's pent-up energy suddenly finding focus. Gilfoyle kisses with intent, and Dinesh matches him. He's used to pushing back against Gilfoyle, and it's a relief to feel them back on the same page. 

Gilfoyle pulls back, and Dinesh chases his lips for a moment, not satisfied. Then his eyes slide open to see Gilfoyle, looking utterly unchanged. Without a word, Gilfoyle straightens and walks into the house. 

Dinesh stares at where he'd been, dumbfounded. The water sloshes and then settles from where Gilfoyle had stirred it up, and only a minute later, when the motion from the filter has become the only thing stirring its surface, Dinesh's phone buzzes. He pulls it out.

_You coming?_

Dinesh bites his lip, staring at the words, the profile picture that still isn't of Gilfoyle's face, but is just a pentagram.

He gets up and heads inside. 

Gilfoyle is waiting on his bed when Dinesh opens the door, and he's still not wearing a shirt, but he is mostly dry at this point.

"Please tell me you have something on under that towel," Dinesh pleads, shutting the door behind him.

"Would that actually make a difference?"

"This is weird, right?" Dinesh asks, taking the fresh bottle of beer that Gilfoyle hands him and sitting down in his desk chair. "Everything about this feels weird."

"Parts of this are weird," Gilfoyle allows. "But I do take a certain amount of pleasure in your company."

"That is absolutely untrue," Dinesh says flatly. "Unless you count mocking me. Since when does that mean…" he gestures weakly. "This?"

Gilfoyle frowns. "If you want to get all emotionally vulnerable, you should know I don't suddenly get good at that because someone's seen my dick. Frankly, the fact that you're equally unable to express your feelings in traditional ways is one of your biggest strengths. So I'm only gonna say this once. I'm up for this. If you don't want it, then I'm willing to pretend this whole day never happened."

Dinesh eyes him skeptically. "You're not going to mock me for being gay for you?"

"Oh no," Gilfoyle corrects. "You proved you were Code Gay, and therefore regular gay for me, a long time ago. I will still mock you mercilessly about that and any future events. But nothing from today. So get your shit together. Because if we don't deal with this now, and you start eyefucking me from the other side of the garage again tomorrow, the mocking will commence immediately." Dinesh glares at him. "That's really the best offer you're going to get. You should take it."

Dinesh groans, throwing his head back and pressing his hands over his eyes. "I don't know where this came from." There's no need to specify that  _this_ has maybe been a thing for a lot longer than the garage server. He just hadn't expected Gilfoyle hauling servers around to be as overwhelming as it had been. 

"Again," Gilfoyle says, neither unkindly nor untruthfully, "you've known about the code gay thing for a while. It's not my fault you're the least introspective person on the planet."

Dinesh makes a high-pitched sound, his eyes still covered. It's not completely about the gay thing, because he went to college and he lives in California and he's not actually oblivious to his own desires. He's just deeply confused and concerned that they've settled on Gilfoyle, who is also the closest thing he has to an arch-nemesis. But maybe also the closest thing he has to a friend. Certainly right now the closest thing he has to a... lover? Lay? Fuck-buddy? He stops with the labels before it gets even more distressing. Also he should maybe diversify his acquaintances.

When he finally opens his eyes again, no more enlightened but suspicious at the long silence, Gilfoyle is on his phone. "Really?" he demands. "I'm having a quarter-life crisis here, and you're on your phone?"

Gilfoyle shrugs, but he flicks the screen off and drops it to his lap. "You looked like you were taking a minute. I get bored."

"Oh my God," Dinesh moans. "I can't believe I'm going to sleep with you."

"You don't have to," he points out. "In fact, if you really don't want to, I'd rather you left."

Dinesh hesitates, agonized. "What if I don't know?" 

Gilfoyle's mouth works, and Dinesh almost wishes he'd say _fuck it_ , though whether Dinesh wants the follow-up action to be tackling him to the bed or kicking him out of the room entirely, he's not sure. "Unfortunate," is what he says at last. "But understandable." He shifts on the bed. "This doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing deal right now. But we could provide some more evidence for you to make your decision." He inclines his head meaningfully to the spot next to him on the bed. 

 

Dinesh hesitates another minute. "Do you even like me? Or is this just an any willing body kind of situation?"

"Asked and answered," Gilfoyle retorts. "Now come here."

Dinesh wheels his chair forward, feeling more like a child being called to detention than a man about to be kissed. He gets more nervous the closer he gets, but then he's staring at Gilfoyle's mouth, and he rolls the last few inches a little faster.

Gilfoyle is a little lower the way they're seated, so he reaches up, pulling Dinesh toward him with a hand on the back of his neck. He other hand lands on Dinesh's arm just below his elbow. It's not the most erogenous area, but Dinesh feels strung out and skittish under his hands, and he figures maybe a forearm is risque enough just now.

Dinesh for his part freezes a little when Gilfoyle's lips touch his, letting Gilfoyle take the lead. He jerks away just a little when Gilfoyle presses in, and Gilfoyle pauses in turn, then presses in again when Dinesh doesn't pull away any more. This time, Dinesh leans into it and, after a cautious moment, his mouth opens, letting Gilfoyle's lower lip slide between his. He brings his hands up to touch almost reverentially at Gilfoyle's hair, thumbs sliding against his temples and bumping his glasses frames.

Gilfoyle takes a firmer grip on Dinesh's neck, fingers pressing into his hair and over the knob at the base of his neck. He strokes the soft skin near Dinesh's elbow, urging him forward just a bit more. Dinesh makes a soft, plaintive sound and melts forward out of the chair, sliding onto the bed next to Gilfoyle and running shy hands down the bare skin of his shoulders and back. Gilfoyle shivers at the faint touch, almost ticklish, and adjusts his grip again, tilting Dinesh's head back now that they're more equally arranged.

Dinesh whimpers, and Gilfoyle draws back suddenly. "No?" he asks, eyes suddenly much darker and larger from this close up. Dinesh swallows.

"No, yes," he says, totally coherently, and tries to recapture Gilfoyle's lips. But he flinches on contact, drawing back, and then yanks his hands from Gilfoyle's skin. "Fuck! I didn't mean no, but then you stopped, and it got weird!"

Gilfoyle sighs. "Look, I'm pretty sure if I touched your dick right now you'd actually have a stroke. Maybe we take a break for tonight."

Dinesh scowls. "Well thanks for giving me a hard on and then making it too weird to keep going."

Gilfoyle smirks. "You're gonna think about me when you rub it out."

Dinesh makes a pained face, because he can't even argue that.

It's not even that late, so when Dinesh wanders out of his room an hour or so later, Gilfoyle is stretched out on the couch reading a book. Dinesh turns his head to catch the title, but it's just one of the Discworld books, which means nothing where Gilfoyle is concerned. He has maybe the entire series stashed in his closet, given the number of them Dinesh has seen over the years, all of them dog-eared and probably second-hand, like most of his books.

Richard is sitting at the work station, his headphones on, but Dinesh still doesn't like saying anything in front of him. He pauses in front of Gilfoyle. "Want to play Monster Hunter?"

Gilfoyle looks up at him consideringly. "Did you?" he asks, and Dinesh flushes, looking back at Richard, even though there's absolutely no way he could know that Gilfoyle's not asking about videogames, but about the last question before that.

"Yes," he dares. "Did you?"

Gilfoyle raises his chin a few degrees, staring Dinesh down. "Oh yeah."

Fuck. Dinesh likes that more than he'd expected. He sits down anyway, his back to Gilfoyle, and tosses a controller over his shoulder. "It wasn't that good," Dinesh lies.

"Yes it was," Gilfoyle answers, and then proceeds to murder him repeatedly. At this point, Dinesh is just relieved he doesn't find that sexy, too.

 


End file.
